U.S. stocks ended the week on a good note on Friday, rising higher and pushing the S&P 500 index further along in it’s longest hot streak in more than six years, MarketWatch reports.
According to the news source, the positive Wall Street sentiment was attributed to reports of strong quarterly results from some of the country’s largest companies, such as Proctor & Gamble Co., as well as other improving economic factors.
“The housing market is generally positive and causing an upward bias to the market [and] quarterly earnings are generally in line to above expectations,” said Terry Sandven, chief equity strategist at U.S. Bank Asset Management.
Budding companies in emerging markets will also have a positive effect for several U.S. multinational corporations. Sandven added that this is “one catalyst that could see earnings to the upside; you’re seeing some of that with fourth-quarter results.”
Still, he did concede that the market could be getting “a little ahead of itself,” and he would like to “see it go sideways in coming weeks to take some of the adrenaline out of the market.”
The S&P 500 jumped by 5.96 points, or 0.4 percent, to 1,500.78. Consumer discretionary was the top performing industry, while the tech sector grew the least out of the 10 biggest industries. Meanwhile, the Dow Jones Industrial Average rose 52.23 points, or 0.4 percent, to 13,877.56.
According to Reuters, Procter & Gamble’s stock rose 3.9 percent to $73.15, helping both the Dow and the S&P 500 rise higher. Shares jumped after the world’s largest household products manufacturer announced its quarterly profit rose far higher than any analysts’ estimates.
If the S&P rises further on Friday, it would mark the longest winning streak since 2004.
“Expectations had been pretty low for the quarter given the ‘fiscal cliff’ concerns, etc., so some of the stocks are acting pretty well even with numbers that are a little bit better than people had feared,” concluded Doug Foreman, co-chief investment officer at Kayne Anderson Rudnick Investment Management.
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